How a development gets approved in Queensland: from application to decision

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Kooky

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A sign goes up on a fence. A tower is announced as approved. A paddock on the edge of town is declared a Priority Development Area. Each of these is a moment in the same system, and each leaves residents, buyers and landowners asking the same things: who decided that, by what process, and did anyone get a say?

Queensland's answer is more orderly than it can look from the footpath. Most development is assessed by the local council under the Planning Act 2016, through a process with five defined parts and a clock on each. A smaller number of projects are decided by the State, through two pathways that have been used more often over the past two years: State Facilitated Development and Priority Development Areas.

This guide walks through the council process first, part by part, then the State's role inside it, then the two State pathways and how they differ. It describes the general system as set out in Queensland Government planning material, the Development Assessment Rules and published legal guides. It does not cover building approvals, which are a separate and later step.

Three doors into the system

A proposal to build housing in Queensland can be decided through one of three routes. Which one applies depends on where the land is and whether the State has stepped in.

The decision clocks in the table are only the last part of each process. As the sections below show, the time from lodgement to decision is longer, and often much longer.

Does it need an application at all?

Not everything needs approval. The Planning Act sorts development into three categories, which the Queensland Law Handbook, updated on 20 May 2026, sets out as follows.

Accepted development needs no application. Many houses on ordinary residential lots fall here, provided they meet the standards in the planning scheme.

Assessable development needs a development approval before it can go ahead. This is where subdivisions, apartment buildings and most changes of land use sit.

Prohibited development cannot be applied for at all.

The council's planning scheme, with State regulation behind it, decides which category a proposal falls into. The same building can be accepted development in one zone and assessable in another, which is why the zoning of a site is the first thing a planner checks.

Code or impact: the fork that decides everything else

Assessable development is then split again, and this second split shapes the whole experience for applicants and neighbours.

Code assessment applies where the planning scheme already anticipates the use. The proposal is measured against written codes: height, setbacks, car parking, landscaping and the like. If it complies, it is to be approved. The Queensland Law Handbook notes that code assessable development generally does not require public notification, so neighbours are usually not asked.

Impact assessment applies where a proposal goes beyond what the scheme anticipates for the site, such as a taller building or a use the zone does not list. The assessment is broader, the public must be notified, and anyone may lodge a submission.

The five parts of the process

The Queensland planning department's fact sheet on development assessment describes five parts to the formal process. It also makes the point that not every part applies to every application.

Before any of this, many applicants hold a pre-lodgement meeting with the council. The Queensland Law Handbook describes these as neither a legal nor a formal requirement, though they help identify the council's concerns early.

An application is properly made when it follows the Development Assessment Rules, uses the approved form and comes with the fee. For an impact assessable application, the assessment manager then issues a confirmation notice, which among other things tells the applicant how the proposal must be notified. For a code assessable one, the planning department's fact sheet says a confirmation notice is optional.

How long each part takes

The Development Assessment Rules set a period for every part. Version 2.0 of the rules, which commenced on 22 July 2024, gives the following. All periods are in business days unless stated otherwise.

Two features of this timetable explain why applications take longer than the headline 35 days.

The first is that the periods are consecutive, and the longest of them belongs to the applicant. An applicant has three months to answer an information request, and that time can be extended by agreement, according to the planning department's fact sheet.

The second is that the clock can be stopped. The rules allow the applicant to pause the process, for a cumulative total of up to 130 business days. Applicants often do so to redesign a proposal in response to the council's concerns or to submissions.

A straightforward code assessable application with no referral can be decided in a couple of months. An impact assessable application with a referral, an information request and a notification period will commonly take much of a year. Those are descriptions of how the periods add up, not statutory totals.

Public notification and submissions

When an application must be notified, the applicant does it, not the council. The planning department's fact sheet lists three things the applicant must do: display a sign on the land, give notice to the owners of adjoining properties, and publish a notice in a newspaper, in print or online, or on a website.

The Queensland Law Handbook gives the minimum display period as 15 business days, and notes that the days from 20 December to 5 January do not count. The notice must say what is proposed, where the application can be viewed and when submissions close.

Notification is required for impact assessable applications and for those that include what is called a variation request, the fact sheet says.

Anyone can make a submission. It does not have to come from a neighbour. To count as properly made, the fact sheet says, a submission must be in writing, be signed, address the application and arrive by the closing date. That status matters later, because it is what gives a submitter the right to appeal.

A submission is not a vote. The assessment manager must consider what submissions say, and the planning merits they raise, and is not bound by their number.

The decision and the right to appeal

At the end, the assessment manager has four options, as the planning department's fact sheet lists them: approve, approve in part, approve with conditions, or refuse. In practice almost every approval carries conditions, covering matters from road works and stormwater to landscaping and infrastructure charges.

A decision notice must be issued within five business days of the decision.

There are then two groups who may appeal. The applicant may appeal a refusal or a condition. And, for impact assessable applications, a submitter who made a properly made submission may appeal the decision in the Planning and Environment Court, the fact sheet says. There is no such right for code assessable applications, since the public was never asked.

An approval does not last forever. The fact sheet says development approvals generally specify a currency period of between two and six years, depending on the type of development. If the development has not started in that time, the approval lapses unless it is extended.

Where the State comes in on a council application

Even on an application the council decides, the State is often at the table. That is what the referral part of the process is for.

When a proposal affects a matter of State interest, such as a State-controlled road, a railway corridor, koala habitat or the coast, the application is referred to the State Assessment and Referral Agency, known as SARA. The planning department's fact sheet explains that SARA acts as either the assessment manager or a referral agency, and assesses applications against a document called the State Development Assessment Provisions.

As a referral agency, the State does not decide the application, but its response can require conditions or direct refusal on the matters within its remit. The Development Assessment Rules give referral agencies between 10 and 25 business days for their assessment, depending on the agency.

Other bodies can be referral agencies as well, including fire and emergency services and the operators of electricity and other networks.

State Facilitated Development

The first of the State's own pathways sits inside the Planning Act but takes the decision away from the council. It grew out of the housing availability and affordability amendments introduced to Parliament in 2023, which the law firm King and Wood Mallesons analysed at the time.

The mechanism is a declaration. The Planning Minister declares a particular proposal to be a State facilitated application. From then on, the head of the State planning department decides it. Any earlier application for the same development starts again under the new pathway, and the usual appeal rights are switched off. A State fact sheet of 29 May 2024 says third-party appeals are limited for these projects.

The clock is shorter. The Development Assessment Rules give the applicant 30 business days to answer an information request, where a standard applicant has three months, and give the decision-maker 30 business days to decide, where a council has 35.

The criteria have changed since the pathway began. The 2024 fact sheet required at least 15 per cent of dwellings to be affordable housing. A Queensland Government statement of 20 March 2026 announced new criteria made by regulation. A project must now be predominantly residential. It must sit in a zone that supports residential use, or else be outside environmental and limited development zones with infrastructure readily available. And the local council must give written support before a declaration is made.

That last requirement changes the character of the pathway. In its first form it could override a council. In its current form it needs the council's agreement to begin.

As to scale, a Queensland Government statement of 10 June 2026 counted eight approvals through the pathway, covering 4,232 homes, with one more application under assessment. The largest, Lakesview at Robina on the Gold Coast, accounts for 2,500 of those homes.

Priority Development Areas

The second State pathway is older and works on areas, not individual projects. A Priority Development Area is declared under the Economic Development Act 2012 by the Minister for Economic Development Queensland. A fact sheet published by Economic Development Queensland in December 2025 lists 38 of them across the state. Halls Creek, south of Caloundra, was declared on 17 July 2026.

Once an area is declared, the Planning Act process described above no longer applies to it. The area gets its own plan and its own assessment system.

The plan comes in two stages. An interim land use plan takes effect on declaration and regulates development for up to 24 months, the fact sheet says. It is replaced by a development scheme, the permanent plan, which overrides the council's planning instruments for land in the area. A guide published by the Environmental Defenders Office in April 2023 says the public has a minimum of 30 business days to comment on a proposed development scheme once it is published.

Applications are lodged with Economic Development Queensland. In some areas assessment is delegated to the local council, and in two inner Brisbane areas to the Cross River Rail Delivery Authority, according to the fact sheet. The statutory period for a decision is 40 business days. Where an application has to be notified, the Environmental Defenders Office guide says submissions are invited for at least 20 business days.

The appeal position is the main difference from the council process. The same guide notes that the Economic Development Act does not provide a general right to appeal a decision to approve a development application in a Priority Development Area.

What an approval does not tell you

A development approval is permission to use land in a certain way. It is not a start date, and it is not a promise to build.

After the planning approval come operational works approvals for the roads and services, then building approvals for the structures themselves, then construction. A project can stop at any of those steps if costs, finance or the market move against it, and an approval that is not acted on within its currency period lapses.

This is why the figures quoted in announcements need care. Homes "approved", homes "unlocked" and homes "under construction" are three different counts, taken at three different points along the same road. For anyone weighing what a nearby approval means, the practical questions are which route it took, whether appeal rights exist and have expired, and whether anything on the site has begun.

The council route gives the public a submission and an appeal. The State routes trade some of that for speed and coordination. Knowing which one a project took explains most of what happens next.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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